Last week, I excitedly wrote about the Hinkley deal which the world expected to be signed on Thursday and Friday. The Prime Minister had other ideas and so the uncertainty over the project’s future continues. However, this also demonstrates something I’ve been arguing for a little while: We cannot put all our economic eggs in Hinkley’s basket.
Economic growth in Devon and Somerset is driven by an organisation called the Heart of the South West Local Enterprise Partnership. The LEP develops the growth strategy for our area and submits the bids for Government funding. This could be more money for infrastructure like broadband, better roads or a new railway station, or to stimulate certain skills, the arrival of new industries or the growth of existing ones. They are effectively the custodians of our industrial strategy.
I remain a steadfast supporter of Hinkley C both as an industrial opportunity for our county and as an essential part of the UK’s energy mix. But we will not be building Hinkley forever and, as I said last week, we won’t need nuclear power stations for our energy baseload forever either. So the LEP’s focus on nuclear as the centrepiece of Devon and Somerset’s industrial strategy does not look particularly long sighted.
I think that alongside nuclear, we should be more focussed on pursuing growth in our tourism industry, food and drink manufacturing, agri-tech, renewable energy and defence and aerospace. We have those industries here in Somerset already - they’re doing well – but our economic future needs to be built on broad foundations so let’s make sure those are central parts of our industrial strategy too.